Fluid boundaries, standing standpoints and argumentative allies. Proposals for the examination of networked public arguments

Political argumentation is a characteristically complex practice: it features open access to a heterogeneous audience and it lacks time limits and a clear terminus (Zarefsky 2008). This is a challenge not just for arguers who, as Zarefsky tells us, have no option but to manoeuvre strategically as they argue. The open-ended almost limitless character of a public political argument is a challenge also for argumentation scholars who strive to develop the theoretical tools that can provide meaningful examination of political argumentation. Important advances in the examination of political argumentation have been realised by means of integrating rhetorical insights (e.g. van Eemeren & Houtlosseer 1999, Tindale 2004, Zarefsky 2014), as well as institutional considerations (e.g. Goodnight 2010, van Eemeren 2010) and political considerations (Fairclough & Fairclough 2012). Yet, crucial aspects of the complexity remain challenging.

As more and more of today’s arguments go into the ‘networked’ public sphere (Benkler 2006, Kaiser et al. 2017, Pfitser 2014), the open-endedness turns ‘networked’ too. Many of today’s arguments involve multiple parties in multiple places (Lewiński 2014, Aakhus & Lewiński 2017), arguers who pursue multiple goals (Mohammed 2016a) and address multiple issues (Mohammed 2016b). At any point in time, countless controversies roam the networked public sphere. Arguments emerge to manage the disagreement (Jackson & Jacobs 1980, Jacobs & Jackson 1989) as part of a complex network where distinct lines of disagreement in relation to different issues crisscross and overlap (Aakhus 2002, Lewiński & Mohammed 2015). For arguers, navigating one’s way into this network requires careful craft in order to keep under control the contributions that one’s arguments make to the different interrelated issues present (Mohammed 2016a, 2016b, Mohammed & Zarefsky 2011). For analysts, the challenge is to determine the boundaries of the argumentative encounter in the open-ended disagreement network.

In this talk, I argue that a meaningful examination of networked argumentative encounters requires that the boundaries of an encounter remain ‘fluid’. On the one hand, it is recommended to extend the limits of the encounter to include all the parts of the disagreement network which are being addressed. This is necessary for capturing the strategic design of argumentative moves. On the other hand, it is important to keep the encounter as close as possible to the space and time in which it occurs. This is critical for preventing speculations and unfounded attributions of commitments. In dealing with the fluid boundaries, I suggest to identify “argumentative allies” and “standing standpoints”. In the absence of evidence to the opposite, an arguer can be attributed a standing standpoint (y) when she advances an argument (x) that has become publically associated with standpoint (y). The attribution is even more justified when an “argumentative ally”, that is someone who has publically expressed similar positions, has advanced the argument x therefore y. I discuss the proposals, their merits and the further challenges they pose.